These and Those

Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem

Tag Archives: prayer / tefillah / davening

New Year’s Intentions: Tefilah and Focus

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Amy Gold

This was originally distributed to the families of Epstein Hillel School, January 2, 2019. Amy Gold participated in the Pardes Tefilah Education Initiative Retreat in the Boston area. To register for our June 2019 conference visit our Tefilah Education Conference for Day School Administrators homepage. January first brings New Year’s resolutions. Commercials on the radio, social Continue Reading »

Shouting Down From the Women’s Balcony, a Latter-Day Yentl Discovers That Prayer is Protest

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Andrea Wiese

This article originally appeared on The Sisterhood blog on the Forward. I have always been adamant that my personal prayer was not a protest or a fight for something. Then a recent interaction with a rabbi — me on the women’s balcony, him down below in the men’s section — made me rethink my stance. Continue Reading »

Turkey 2016: Day One – Elu V’Elu

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Andrew Ash

Today was the first day of our 2016 Pardes trip to Turkey. It was not an uneventful day. With sadness and anger did I receive the news that a suicide bomber attacked the heart of Istanbul’s historic center, a square adjoining the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. These monuments have stood for generations and will Continue Reading »

A House of Prayer for All Peoples

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Savannah Shepherd

Over the past year, I have been trying to write myself into the story of the Jews, looking for the proper label to define myself by. I’ve been searching for the Judaism that feels right and just, and allows me to connect with G-d and my community; I chose this life, after all, and I Continue Reading »

Morning Mindfulness

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Juli Goodman

This post was originally published in www.backpocketeducation.com. This program is inspired by a text I learned in Yaffa Epstein’s course “Without Understanding, How Can I Pray” at the Pardes Institute this summer. I was struck by how detailed the text is with regard to the specific blessing associated with each action, as though a simple Continue Reading »

Pardes Turkey 2015: Today the Heart Returns

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Geo Poor

The chuppah travels down the isle, carried by the youth of Istanbul.  Dozens of people walk with it, surrounding it on all sides as if they would prop it up with their tightly-packed selves – many shoulders for the chuppah to lean on.  On each side, the crowd, parted like the Red Sea, stands cheering Continue Reading »

Hallel, A Journey Through the Wilderness of Emotions

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Geo Poor

My favorite service of the whole year is Hallel, a special service we add to certain holidays and to the seder. Hallel has a strange structure. It starts out by saying we are commanded to praise God. Why would be commanded to praise? Does praise really even count if it is not done by choice? Continue Reading »

Ha’azinu and Music and Community (and me)

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Sarah Marx

In the last week, hovering on the edge of Rosh Hashanah, I’ve heard and sung songs that shook me to my core. In the coming weeks, I’ll be faced with many more – liturgy for the High Holidays, its passion and fear barely contained by the melodies’ majesty, or zemirot sung around the Shabbat table. Continue Reading »

Davening in the Details

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Sarah Marx

For a place so much associated with desert and stone and sun, Jerusalem is full of blue. My morning walk to school is painted blue, in both broad and slender strokes: the giant turquoise sky, or the thin stripes of the Israeli flag, or the joyful cerulean paint on someone’s shutters or garden fence. Even Continue Reading »

Jerusalem Diaries #8….Study, study, and more study!

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Ariella Siegel

From my blog: September already! Time flies when you’re being Jewy, I suppose. What a whirlwind! And I’m exhausted! Last we left off, it was orientation and more orientation and lots more orientation and then shabbat. The contrast between doing, doing, doing and then not doing at all (except actually doing, because Shabbos is a Continue Reading »